Design producing tile



June 20, 1939. v. HAGOPIAN 2,152,777

I DESIGN PRODUCING TILE Filed June 22, 1936 4 Sheets-Sheet 1 INVENTOR V/wA/v flwoPM/v.

ATTORNEYS v. HAGOPIAN DESIGN PRODUCING TILE Filed June 22, 1956 June 20, 1939.

I 4 Sheets-Sheet 2 INVENTOR ATTORNEYS June 20, 19-39. v HAGOHAN 2,162,777

DESIGN PRODUC ING TILE Filed June 22, 1936 w 4 Sheets-Sheet 3 INVENTOR ATTORNEYS v. HAGOPIAN 2,162,777

DESIGN PRODUC ING TILE June 20; .1939.

Filed June 22, 1936 4 Sheets-Sfieet 4 \Q [I I 4 52 b /4 8 INVENTOR VA/M/V A4460P/AN ATTORNEYS Patented June 20, 1939.

PATENT orr c z DESIGN PRODUCING TILE Vaban Hagopian, New York, N. Y., assignor to Certain-teed Products Corporation, New York, N. Y., a corporation of Maryland Application June 22, 1936, Serial No. 86,570

B'Claims. (Cl. 4l24) This invention relates to tiles intended to produce ornamental designs on the walls or ceilings which they cover or form and has for its general object so to locate upon each of a set of rec- 5 tangular tiles a design element or elements capable, when several tiles having the same or different elements are located in juxtaposition to each other, of producing geometrical designs in a great variety. v

w Although it has been customary for ages to produce design effects by the use of tiles having thereon difierent colors and difi'erent parts of the ultimate design to be produced, such as mosaic designs, the design effects have usually been 15 produced by using a very large number of very small tiles, frequently of a great variety of shapes, and the element of the design itself has had no particular relation to the tile on which it is carried, so that the tile could not readily be used to 20 produce a variety of designs such as the simple or even the more complicated geometric designs.

A particular object of the present invention, therefore, is to provide a set of tiles, each having A thereon a design element or elements, in which 25 the design element or elements is or are so located with respect to the bounding edges of the tile on which it or they are carried that the tiles may be laid in various relations to each other, that is, with'any edge of one tile in congo tiguity. with any edge of another tile and still produce, bythe combinationof the design elements of the two tiles, an enhanced design effect.

The invention has particular utility when used to produce ornamental effects with relatively large tiles such as those made from cane board, and especially when the designs are formed in intaglio inthe cane board.

, An important feature of the invention is the' so location of thedesign element or elements on each tile so that each end of the design element is substantially .both at a side edge and at a corner of the tile. It will be observed that such an arrangement facilitates the cooperation of the design elements of the difierent tiles with each other to form various design eifects.

Other objects and important features of the invention will appear when the following description'and'claims are considered in connection with the accompanying drawings in which Figures 1 to '7, inclusive, illustrate in outline how readily tiles, having thereon the simple design elements of the set of tiles herein illus 55 trated, arranged in the particular manner of the present invention with respect to the sides and corners of the tiles, lend themselves to the production of a great variety of ornamental geometrical designs; 4

Figures 8 to 17, inclusive, illustrate a set of ten tiles having thereon simple elements of geometrical designs by means of which designs such as illustrated in Figures 1 to '7, inclusive, can readily be produced;

Figure 18 illustrates, on a somewhat larger 10 scale, the tiles of Figures and 17 in juxtapo-. sition, this figure showing the invention as embodied in a cane board or similar tile, with the design elements cut in intaglio therein and the edges of the tile having the usual bevelling employed in such tile constructions;

Figure 19 is a section on the line l9--l9 of Figure 18, and v Figure 20 is a section on the line 20-40 of Figure 1a. 20

' In the illustrative embodiment of the invention, the tiles 2, used to make up the geometrical designs, are rectangular for convenience in bringing them into juxtaposition to each other and are preferably of equilateral rectangular or square contour, since the equilateral contour further facilitates the formation'of geometrical designs by the juxtaposition of tiles each 'having thereon an element of the design located thereon in the manner hereinafter'described. l

The design elements may be placed upon or formed in the tiles in any convenient manner, the manner of forming the design element upon. or in the tile depending somewhat upon whether .the design element is to be added to the tile after the tile has been manufactured, or whether it is to be formed on or in the tile in the process of its manufacture, In t a form of the invention illustrated in Figures 18 to 20, inclusive, for example, when the design element is to be placed upon tiles made of cane board, it is usually found most convenient to cut or abrade the design into the face of the tile so that the design is formed in intaglio.

One of the objects of the invention is to provide a set of tiles having the design elements of such simple form that they can readily be placed upon tiles of the character of those illustrated in Figures 18 to 20, inclusive, without the use of complicated machinery and also to provide a set of such a small variety that it will not be necestal geometric designs.

In Figures 8 to 17-, inclusive, are shown ten tiles of like shapes and dimensions, each having thereon a different group of elements of geometric designs, so arranged with respect to the sides and corners of the tile that each element of the group of elements located on a tile has each end substantially both at a side edge and at a corner of the tile. This arrangement, as may be seen from an inspection of Figures 1 to 7, inclusive, facilitates the formation of designs by the juxtaposition either of tiles having the same design elements thereon'or of tiles having different design elements thereon.

In Figure 8, for example, which has straight line design elements extending in parallelism to its four sides, it will be seen that each of these elements ends at two opposite sides of the tile adjacent to corners of the tile and that the design elements extending parallel to two of the parallel sides of the tile intersect the design elements extending parallel to the other two sides of the tile. Some of the uses of this tile are shown in Figures 1, 3, 4 and 6.

In Figure 9 the design elements extending parallel to one of the sides in Figure 8 have been omitted. This provides a tile that is useful in forming designs such as shown in Figure 2.

In Figure 10 the design elements which appear I in Figure 8 on two of the opposite sides have been omitted, thus providing a tile useful in producing a design such as shown in Figure 2,'also in Figures 5 and 7-.

In Figure 11 the design elements of two of the adjacent sides in Figure 8 have been omitted and there has been placed in the corner, thus left free of design elements such as appear in Figure 8, lines or grooves parallel to a diagonal through the square, so spaced with respect to each other as to register with the ends of the design elements of Figures 8, 9 and 10 when placed in juxtaposition thereto. The tile of Figure 11 is useful in producing. designs such as shown in Figures 1,2, 6 and '7.

In Figure 12 the design elements of Figure 8 have been omitted from three sides and the two corners thus left free of design elements of the character of those shown in Figure 8 have been provided with lines or grooves parallel to the diagonals of the square which, like the corresponding element of Figure 11, will register with elements similar to those of Figure 8 when the tile is placed in juxtaposition to a tile having such elements thereon. The tile of Figure 12 is useful in producing designs such as shown in Figures 1, 2, 5, 6 and 7.

Figure 13 illustrates a tile in which the design elements are placed in each corner thereof and extend parallel to the diagonals of, the tile. The tile of Figure 13 is useful in producing designs such as shown in Figures 3 and 4.

In Figure 14 the design elements comprise five grooves or line effects extending diagonally across the tile, together with corner elements like those of Figure 13 in the other two corners, the purpose of the large groove extending directly from one corner to the other, when the design ele ments are formed in intaglio, being to form a design element which will merge with the groove formed by the usual bevel provided on each edge of tiles such as illustrated in Figure 18. Figure 14 in useful in the formation of designs such as shown in Figures 3 and 5.

Figure 15 shows a tile in which the diagonal design element of Figure 14 is duplicated along the other diagonal of the tile. This tile is useother.

ful in producing a design such as is shown in Figure 3.

In Figure 16 the tile is provided with a design element comprising lines or grooves extending in a half circle from one corner to the other corner on the same side of. the tile, these lines or grooves ending substantially at the two corners on the same side 'of the tile so as to register with correspondingly located design elements of other tiles. The other two corners of this tile are provided with the corner elements of the tile of Figure 13. This tile is useful in producing designs such as shown in Figures 1, 3 and 4.

In Figure 17 is shown a tile in which a design element, forming a quarter of a circle and formed, if desired and as shown, of a plurality of lines or grooves, extends from one corner of the til to the diagonally opposite corner, the other two corners being provided with the design elements of the tile of Figure 13. This tile is useful in producing designs such as those shown in Figures 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. I

When the tile is formed of cane board or similar material the design elements are preferably formed in the tile, as shown in Figures 18 to 20, by cutting or abrading grooves therein, Figure 20 showing, in juxtaposition, the tiles of Figures 15 and 17. The upper one of the two tiles of Figure 18, which is designated by the numeral 15, enclosed in a circle, to indicate that it is the tile having thereon the design of Figure 15, is provided with two sets of five diagonal grooves, each set extending parallel to a diagonal of the tile. Of those grooves the grooves 4, 6 and 8 are shown as relatively deep grooves, corresponding in depth substantially to the depth of the groove made by the bevels ID of two tiles placed adjacent to each The intermediate grooves l2 and I4- are preferably shallow grooves, hereby producing the ornamental efiect shown at the center of the tile. The groove 6 of each set of diagonal grooves ends in the exact corner of the tile, that is, where the sides'bf the tile intersect, while the other grooves,

20, the grooves l6 and 20 being deep grooves and the groove 18 being a shallow groove. It will further be noted that the groove l6, which is of a depth corresponding substantially to the' depth of the groove formed by the bevels IU of two tiles placed adjacent to each other, so ends in the diagonally opposite corners of the tile that at its very end one side of the groove l6 substantially merges with the bevel IU of the side of the tile tangential thereto, thereby causing the grooves l8 and 20 to be spaced slight distances from the exact corner of the tile, but for design purposes it may be said that the characteristic design element of this tile ends substantially both at aside edge and at a corner of the tile. The groove 20 is preferably also of a depth corresponding to the depth of a groove formed by the bevels ll) of two adjacent tiles.

From the foregoing description it will be seen that many thousands of different geometrical designs of the greatest variety of ornamental effects 1 can be produced by various combinations and permutations of the tiles of'the set illustrated in Figures 8 to 17. inclusive, the designs shown in Figures 1 to 7 being merely illustrative of some of the uses of these tiles and of the facility to design production which the characteristic arrangement of the design elements on the tiles of the present invention brings about. By having these design elements ending at the corners of the tiles, that is, intersecting the side edges of the tiles substantially at the corners, the design elements of the difierent tiles can readily be made to cooperate with each other to' produce an almost infinite variety of geometrical design effects.

What is claimed as new is:

l. A rectangular tile having upon a face thereof a design element so located with respect to the sides and the corners of the tile that eachthe production of .a great variety of ornamental 2. A rectangular tile having all of its edges chamfered at a face thereof and having formed in said face a linear groove as a design element having each end thereof at an edge of said tile and adjacent a corner of the tile, the distance between the end and the adjacent corner being the same for each end of the groove, the depth of said groove being the same as that of the chamfer below said face, whereby when two tiles are juxtaposed with corners meeting and edges in contact a depression is provided by said chamfers on the line of contact of said tiles of the same depth and meeting said linear groove and forming therewith a design the elements of which pass through the corners at which said tiles meet as well as extending along the edges of the tiles. x

3. A rectangular tile according to claim 2 in which said linear groove intersects said edge at an angle thereto.

4. A rectangular tile according to claim 2' in which said groove extends parallel to an edge of said tile. g

5. A rectangular tile according to claim 2 in which said linear groove is formed in the arc of a circle.

6. A rectangular tile according to claim 2 in which said linear groove is formed in the arc of a circle having a portion thereof generally tangent to an edge of the tile.

VAHAN HAGOPIAN. 

